We'll Keep Running For Our Lives
by Basser
Summary: Following the events of Can't Rewind Now, a wandering Sherlock finds himself in Florida. He soon discovers not all is as it seems in the lives of an elderly couple named Hudson.
1. One

**We'll Keep Running For Our Lives**

**Rating: **T _(for now, subject to change)._**  
Pairings: **_None!_**  
Warnings: **_Language, explicit violence, mentions of drug use._

**A/N: **_Hello again! So I've decided to do shorter chapters this time, and will be making an effort to avoid being quite so obsessive about keeping consistent wordcount. This should improve my dismal update speed. Speaking of, though, I'm also not going to apologise for delays. I may take a month to finish up the next part, or a week, or maybe I'll post in a day. It's all dependent on my motivation levels and work schedule. Have patience._

_As always I would be thrilled to hear what you think! Good, bad, constructive or not - leaving a review is by far the best way to get me excited to write more. When no one comments on my work I tend to feel like I'm posting into the void and lose interest quickly._

_But enough of me nattering. Hope you all enjoy the next leg of Sherlock's angst-ridden adventures!_

* * *

**««**

It was far too bloody hot for this nonsense.

Sherlock scowled to himself as he crashed headlong into a thicket of damp shrubbery, nearly stumbling over the roots therein, and grabbed the thin trunk of some sort of fern-looking tree to swing himself round in the other direction. Here he was, quite possibly running for his _life_, and all he could concentrate on was how disgustingly warm the weather was. Excellent focussing abilities, brain. Very helpful.

After a short pause to get his bearings he took off once more through the tangled leaves. Behind him he could clearly hear the sounds of his pursuers tearing through the foliage as well; to be honest this really hadn't been a well thought-out escape plan. In his defence, however, it did have the advantage of being in the fucking _shade_, which was a stark improvement over his previous path across bare city pavement. Not that the lack of direct sunlight was providing much relief from the sweltering humidity... ugh, bloody horrendous swampland. Why in hell had he ever thought venturing this far south would be a good idea?

"Heeeeere, faggot! Here boy! Come on out, ya faggot-ass cracka!"

Another deep scowl - when had he even _hinted_ that he might be gay? Or were they simply using it as an all-purpose insult? Morons. Under more favourable circumstances he might have been tempted to stop short and treat them all to a lecture on proper heckling techniques whilst dodging blows. That would have to wait for a day when he wasn't feeling so perilously close to passing out with the heat, though. Also preferably when he wasn't being chased by a half dozen steroidal behemoths erroneously labelled members of the human species.

Displaying an uncanny knack for fucking him over his mind of course took that opportunity to focus on entirely the wrong aspect of his surroundings. Running through mud and scrub-brush under a canopy of unfamiliar leaves, the crash of a half dozen angry Americans behind him, and the one thing he found most interesting to look at was a goddamned abandoned tyre off to his right. What was it doing there? Twenty metres from the nearest roadway at _least_, how on earth did a car tyre end up in the middle of a swamp thicket? Someone must have-

His frustratingly off-topic thoughts were cut short as, having not been watching his feet, he stepped squarely in a patch of slick mud and went sprawling arse over tea kettle into the dirt.

"Shit, nigga, white boy fuckin' caught his own damn self!"

A chorus of laughter above him signalled in no uncertain terms that Sherlock was about to have an extremely unpleasant experience. Likely one which would end in either death or permanent disfigurement. He took a moment to wonder what in hell's name had ever possessed him to bother with these idiots in the first place before reluctantly propping himself up on his elbows and lifting his head to regard his adversaries. Above him an over-muscled young black man had crouched down to Sherlock's undignified level; too-white teeth flashed between dark lips as the man grinned smugly down at his cornered prey.

"You gonna regret fuckin' with us, white boy."

Well he already did regret that quite a lot, to be honest, but Sherlock couldn't exactly voice such sentiments aloud. Instead he canted his head slightly to the side and raised an eyebrow in a condescending look.

"Perhaps if you didn't make yourself such an obvious target for ridicule you'd have escaped our little confrontation with your fragile ego intact."

The gang member barked out an amused laugh and turned toward one of his cronies standing at his side. "You fuckin' hear this shit? All a sudden fucker's talking like the goddamn Queen of England."

Sherlock glared as the two bulkiest of the group grabbed him by the biceps and hauled him to his feet. Their apparent ringleader took a step forward and smacked him not-quite-gently on the chest.

"You puttin' on a show for us now, cracka? Wanna go out sounding fancy?"

"I'm British. This is my natural accent," Sherlock explained in an irritated deadpan. Gratifying to know his attempts to mimic the American vernacular had apparently fooled a group of natives, but half-dead of heatstroke and about to have the piss kicked out of him he found this minor success really didn't cheer him in the slightest.

"Huh," the other man nodded slowly in understanding, faking a look of intrigue. Half a second later he dropped the false sagacity and grinned again. "I ain't never beat the shit out of a foreigner before."

"First time for everything, Jay!" one of his cohorts yelled.

"Damn straight!"

Next thing Sherlock knew he was bent double, an wave of acute pain spreading flashfire from his abdomen alerting him to the fact that he'd been punched in the stomach. He choked as his suddenly-frozen diaphragm refused to draw air. Almost immediately the first blow was paired with an uppercut to the jaw, where the side of his tongue made unfortunate contact with the space between his teeth. The cloying metallic taste of fresh blood filled his mouth as white stars exploded in his vision.

Grimacing, he lashed out with his foot and managed to catch the shin of one of the thugs holding him upright. The young man yelped in pain but didn't loosen his grip; instead he jerked Sherlock's shoulder roughly to the side, nearly dislocating the joint as his cohort on the other side threw his weight in the opposite direction. Sherlock grit his teeth, careful to avoid his injured tongue, and summoned all the willpower at his disposal to remain as stoic as possible. Idiots might very well kill him, but damned if he was going to give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.

Next blow was a right hook to the face - far too predictable. He managed to shift his head enough to let the fist glance off his cheekbone, saving himself from a probable fracture, and took advantage of the ringleader's momentary skewed balance to try kicking again. This time he caught the idiot square in the groin; the man let out an agonised screech, followed by a string of rather colourful curses. Raucous laughter and a flurry of goading catcalls erupted from the small group of young thugs gathered around them.

"Hahaaa, holy shit!"

"Faggot's in for it now!"

"Fuckin' shank his ass, Jay!"

"Stick him like a hog!"

Jay seemed to force himself back upright, slowly returning to a standing position. All trace of joviality had vanished from his features as he advanced toward Sherlock with a furious, almost psychotic snarl.

Sherlock made a token attempt to yank himself free of the men holding him in place. They just pulled the near-dislocation trick again, forcing him to stand still or risk having his shoulders popped out of place. Seeing no alternative he did his best to fix an unimpressed expression on his face and tried to ignore the cloying sensation of stagnant blood beginning to pool in his mouth as Jay approached.

"That," the man said, face a mask of pure unadulterated rage, "was _not _a good idea."

From the back pocket of faded jeans the man produced an ivory-handled switchblade. Sharp steel flashed dangerously in the speckled light filtering through the canopy of leaves overhead.

Sherlock eyed the weapon warily. A sense of irritated resignation began to settle in his chest - so this was how it was all going to end, was it? Not assassinated by some terror group or kidnapped for use as blackmail against his brother; not even graced with the brief giddy thrill and final spectacular flare-out of a massive cocaine overdose. No, he was simply going to be stabbed in the gut by some two-bit criminal in a bloody swamp on the outskirts of Tallahassee. What a poignant fucking legacy.

Jay was within inches of Sherlock's face now. The dark-skinned man's features split into a wicked half-smile as he brought his knife up to Sherlock's throat, pressing the point into the space under his chin. Sherlock forced his expression to remain neutral and met his soon-to-be murderer's gaze in a level stare.

"Any last words, white boy?"

Sherlock sneered. Milliseconds stretched by in static silence.

Then with a sudden jolt he wrenched himself forward and spat a gob of blood straight into Jay's face. The man reared back with an angry yell, swiping at his eyes, but almost immediately lurched back forward with another savage snarl. Quick as lightning he grabbed Sherlock by the right shoulder and rammed a knee solidly into the smaller man's diaphragm.

Sherlock choked again and curled in on himself in pain. Before he could so much as gasp for breath the hand left his shoulder to instead fist in his hair; he grimaced as his skull was yanked upwards by the scalp, cold press of the knife now at his jugular.

_Going to slit my throat, then, not stab me,_ he found himself thinking in a sort of detached, stress-fogged daze. Jay was saying something - probably a threatening speech of some sort, cement his status as the alpha male of the pack. Meant to intimidate his victim and impress his cohorts. Sherlock was far too busy being distracted by his own brain to bother listening.

_... suppose that's really the best option, anyway. Quickest death. Acute blood loss should be interesting to experience firsthand - is it like falling asleep, or more drawn out? Likely won't be conscious for long either way, vasculature probably dilated thanks to elevated temperature. Should speed up the bleeding. And oh good lord speaking of the heat that bastard's wearing a bloody leather jacket, how is he not dead of hyperthermia!? It feels like we're in a damned oven! Who in god's name would choose to live in this atrocious excuse for a habitable climate?_

A brief scowl crossed his face as it occurred to him that he was spending his last few precious moments of life being annoyed by the weather. That would be him, then: chronically off-topic right to the bitter end.

From somewhere off to their left came the short, clipped wail of a police siren. Jay's hand jerked away from Sherlock's neck as the man stiffened up and whipped his head toward the tree line like a spooked gopher. All around them his cronies did the same.

_"Fuckin' cheese it!"_ one of the boys in the back of the group shouted, and with a suddenness that felt very much as if the ground had dropped out from under him Sherlock abruptly found himself released from his captors' grips. Startled, he collapsed face-first into the dirt in a graceless heap. Above him he heard the thugs scatter in frantic retreat away into the forest.

Merciful serendipity. Would have been nice to have it arrive a bit sooner, though, Sherlock mused... like perhaps before he'd been kneed in the stomach. He turned his head to the side so as not to be inhaling mud, coughed up a thin trickle of blood - hopefully stemming from his cut tongue rather than an internal injury. Ugh but _god_, wouldn't that just make this day one perfect fuck-up? A sodding intestinal bleed on top of everything else.

Oh well. At the very least a police officer would likely come through the area within a few minutes, probably pack him off to a medical facility of some sort. That meant an easy meal, proper bed, clean clothes... all alarmingly scarce resources of late. Silver lining to the whole mess, he supposed.

Of course he'd still have to escape the hospital in a day or so to avoid having his forged travel documents scrutinised too carefully, but that wouldn't be difficult. Far preferable to going to the bother of evading detection right now, at any rate. Best just lie here and wait.

Ten seemingly-endless minutes later, however, and Sherlock was forced to come to the conclusion that the police were not in fact headed his way. Evidently they'd chosen to pursue the crowd of fleeing suspects instead of venturing into the small wooded area. Made some level of sense, considering the lot of them had run off toward the city and not gone further into the trees, but it was still rather unfortunate. Meant Sherlock was going to have to pick himself up.

Alright, well... that was fine. He'd manage. Sod the police anyway.

Sore, bloodied, exhausted and covered in mud Sherlock slowly forced his uncooperative body into a standing position. Good start. Next, walking. Stumbled into a tree here or there as he made his way to the pavement, nearly tripped over a rock. Probably looked like a drunken idiot. Not that anyone noticed, of course - no sign of either law enforcement or street gangs anywhere nearby.

Probably for the best, really. Though he'd have appreciated the cops hanging around to check for potential victims at the very least. Wasn't that their job? Protecting citizens? True he wasn't _technically _a member of their jurisdiction, being a foreign national, but they'd have no knowledge of that. Might have left a true-born patriot to bleed out in the mud for all they knew. Incompetent morons.

Upon reaching the street he staggered sideways and leant heavily on a telephone pole as his knees threatened to give out on him. Dizzy, starting to feel faint. Hadn't eaten in around a day and a half now, likely wasn't doing himself any favours expending so much energy to remain upright. Not much choice in the matter though. Keep moving or die.

Despite the grim finality of this mental ultimatum his legs decided to choose that moment to fold underneath him. He slid down to land in an undignified slouch on the pavement, spine digging painfully into the black-tarred wood of the pole behind him. So much for walking, then. With a slight groan of pain he tilted his head back, stared up into the perfect blue of a clear sunny sky.

Cloudless, empty save a lone passing bird... nothing at all like England. And how could it be that even the _atmosphere_ looked different here? It was the wrong shade of blue. Everything about this place was just so alien and unwelcoming... christ, should have never left New York. At least among the skyscrapers he'd been nearly able to fool himself into thinking he was back in London.

These thoughts occupied him for about a minute before he closed his eyes and let his head loll to the side. Sod it all, might as well fall asleep where he sat. Maybe the thugs would come back and finish what they'd started. Sherlock doubted he could even muster the energy to flip them off at this point.

Fog drifted in tendrils through his mind as his brain began to lose its grip on consciousness. Still frankly dying of heat, but that was a minor complaint in comparison to the sour taste of blood in his mouth and the dull ache of a million bruised muscles. Perspiration dripping down his chest, too, soaking through the thin cotton of his t-shirt… he wondered vaguely if it were possible to sweat to death. Likely to find out in an hour or so.

He huffed a tired sigh and waited for oblivion.

"Oh good graces, dear! You've had a rough time of it, haven't you?"

Sherlock blinked his way out of the clinging wreaths of lethargic mist and squinted up into the dark shadows of a figure standing haloed by the sun overhead. Above him the person shifted, bent forward slightly. Out of the glare of the sun he could now see it was an elderly woman, perhaps in her late sixties, with brownish-auburn hair (most likely dyed) and a friendly, care-worn face. She smiled down at him and reached out with the arm not holding a shopping bag to place a cool hand on his forehead.

"Goodness, you're burning up! What on earth are you doing sitting round out in the sun on a day like this?"

Sherlock stared blankly up at her. It took an inordinate handful of seconds for his brain to finally catch up to the fact that the cadence of her voice actually sounded halfway normal to his ears for a change.

"… you're English," he remarked in a bit of a dazed mumble. The woman gave him an odd sort of look and patted him on the shoulder.

"Last I checked, yes. Now, where do you live? Nearby? Is there someone I can call for you? Oh, well, I haven't got a phone on me… but I suppose you must do, hm? Young folks with their technology these days."

Sherlock made a halfhearted effort to push himself into a more upright position but was forced to give up as his bruised stomach protested the movement. He curled an arm around his midsection instead and drug one of his legs up to lean his head on his knee.

"Not from the area, haven't got a mobile," he replied to the woman's semi-rambling inquiries in a faint monotone. Ugh, he was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

"Oh! Bless my stars, but you're a London boy!" the old woman exclaimed - apparently she'd failed to catch his accent in the slurred mumble of his first words. "Well what are the odds of that, I wonder?"

"Doubtless astronomical," Sherlock responded wearily. He grimaced against the pain now radiating up from his abdomen and hugged his arm more tightly round his stomach. _Fuck_, maybe he'd sustained an internal injury after all.

Regarding him with a concerned look on her face the stranger shifted her hand to briefly grip his shoulder in a sort of comforting gesture. "You are in a right shape, aren't you?" she murmured, seemingly to herself. After a short pause she nodded in a determined sort of way and moved round to hook an arm under Sherlock's armpit.

"What're you-?" he asked, confused, and lifted his head from his knee to blink sidelong at her. She flexed her knees in an ineffectual attempt to lift him up.

"Well come on, then, don't make me do all the work!" she quipped when it became apparent he wasn't going to budge on her strength alone. Sherlock stared at her for a second more, then slowly, obligingly shifted his legs into a better position for standing. Between the two of them they managed to get him mostly upright, though he swayed rather badly and was forced to lean the majority of his bodyweight on her shoulders. Hopefully she was somewhat stronger than her appearance would suggest else they'd both soon find themselves facedown on the pavement.

"Oof! You're a bit heavier than you look, dear," she exclaimed in an amused huff. "My car's just round the corner, then. Off we go."

Sherlock's brain seemed to be spinning itself round in little dizzying circles inside his skull. He tried not to grimace too obviously. _Ugh_, he was going to have to escape from hospital in this state, wasn't he? Bloody hell.

"I don't need medical attention," he lied, hoping to head off the inevitable debacle of a crowded American emergency room and subsequent deportation over his long-expired travel visa. "If you could just drop me off at a hostel or something…"

"Oh nonsense!" the stranger cut over him. "You're dead on your feet, we're getting you to a doctor."

"I really can't afford a hospital visit," he objected. Not strictly true in a monetary sense (he'd simply refuse to pay – on principle if nothing else) but financial hardship made for a far less damning argument than '_I'd like to avoid being arrested'._

"Good job we're not headed to one, then, isn't it? Now mind your head, roof's a tad low."

Without giving Sherlock a chance to ask what on earth she was on about the woman reached out and unlocked the small hatchback they'd come upon. Opening the passenger door she all but shoved him into the seat. He complied with a slightly startled noise of complaint as the door slammed shut beside him.

There was a thump as the old woman stowed her shopping in the backseat, then a tick later she came round to the driver's side. With a friendly smile in his direction (which was met by a confused half-glare) she deftly started up the vehicle.

"Mrs. Hudson, by the way," she informed him in a chipper, genial tone.

Sherlock quirked a brow - no mention of a first name? - but was distracted from any of a million possible responses by the road they'd pulled onto. Passing cars from the wrong side, entire street completely backwards, everything looking just distressingly off-kilter. No matter how many bus rides he took in this blasted country he still always found himself expecting to crash headlong into oncoming traffic at any moment.

"It does take a little getting used to, driving on this side," Mrs. Hudson spoke up. Apparently he'd been obvious enough for her to catch on to the source of his discomfort. "Comes well enough with practise, though, just like anything." She smiled sidelong at him again, then raised her eyebrows in slight disapproval as she turned back to the road. "You know it's polite to introduce yourself back, dear."

"Huh? Oh," Sherlock looked away from the traffic, tried to remember what his current alias was. It had been so long since he'd had a non-confrontational conversation with anyone, let alone been asked for his name… he'd quite forgotten his pseudonym. What had it started with…? An R, maybe, or…

"Not a fake name, if you please," Mrs. Hudson said, cutting into his thoughts. She flicked the turn signal and calmly checked her wing mirror as she changed lanes. "Not that I mind, of course, but it's in case you pass out. You'll not answer to whatever silly thing you're thinking up now and it'll be a dreadful hassle."

Sherlock frowned at her. How did she even know what he'd been-? A guess, had to be. He wasn't _that_ easy to read.

"I wasn't-"

"You clearly were, dear."

He scowled and shifted his head to look out the window. Well… maybe the injuries had undermined his usual façade. Didn't mean he had to admit to it, though. Give her a pseudonym anyway, just out of spite. Glaring irritably at a passing lorry he supplied the first name off the top of his head.

"Frank."

Mrs. Hudson clicked her tongue in disapproval. "No, try again."

Sherlock turned back to fix her with an affronted look. "That's my name."

"It isn't, though."

"How would you know?" he snapped with a slight huff. Mrs. Hudson quirked a wry smile.

"I've been a schoolteacher for a very long time, dear. I know when a young man's lying to me."

He turned back to the window with a glower. Keep trying random names until she gave up, then, or… he caught sight of her vaguely bemused, expectant brow raise out of the reflection off the glass. No, she'd be waiting for that tactic now. What would be the least obvious…? Ugh, _fuck's sake._ How was he being predicted so easily?

After an interminable pause Sherlock finally crossed an arm over his still-aching stomach and slouched down grumpily in his seat.

"It's Sherlock," he supplied, voice gone flat and vaguely petulant. Well… whatever. Not like she could get much information on him with just a first name anyway. Even a unique one like his still required a surname to pinpoint family connections.

Mrs. Hudson smiled. "Much better, thank you." A second passed, then she smirked to herself. "Fair enough, though… with a name like that I suppose I'd make up an alias too."

"Pleased to meet you as well," Sherlock growled back at her, insulted tone making it clear he'd taken offence to the jab. Mrs. Hudson just chuckled.

"Best see if you can rest, it's a bit of a drive yet."

With that she turned her attention back to the road. Sherlock glared at her for a moment, but dropped the expression in favour of wincing at the twinges of pain flashing through his nervous system. He slouched down lower in his seat and blinked away a sudden wave of fatigue. Shouldn't sleep, not trapped alone with a stranger. Focus on breathing instead. In, out, in… out…

Consciousness began to slip from his mind like so much water. Couldn't quite force himself to sit up straighter to ward off the drowsiness - too much work, too painful. He rested his head on the cool glass of the car window instead.

Without really meaning to he closed his eyes. Awareness soon scattered away amid the steady hum of a car engine.

**««**


	2. Two

**««**

Sherlock drifted back to consciousness with the cut of the engine. Devoid of the constant low drone of traffic he found himself confused by the sudden silence. _Where...?_ He blinked around dazedly for a few seconds before the car door opening with a jolt beside him nearly sent him sprawling out of the vehicle.

"Oops! Sorry, dear, didn't know you were still leaning on it," the cheery voice of Mrs. Hudson said with a laugh. She reached out to steady him before he could fall sideways, but he waved her off. Grimacing for the abuse to his bruised abdominal muscles Sherlock slowly shifted himself to climb out of the car on his own.

"You live here," he deduced after a pause to take in his surroundings. It wasn't much of a guess, really. The house was a two-storey bungalow with a sloping roof and rustic brick-and-mortar construction. Close neighbours on either side were hidden by a thick buffer of trees and well-tended shrubbery, with the main body of the garden taken up by a variety of flowers and berry bushes. Dominating the centre of the lawn was a large shade tree of some variety Sherlock couldn't identify, a whitewashed rope-and-wood swinging seat hanging from its thick branches. All in all it looked a picture-perfect rendition of the quintessential elderly domicile.

Mrs. Hudson _hmm_'ed in warm confirmation. "Been working on the garden this year. Aren't the blueberries lovely? Only the birds make off with most of them, you know. They say you're meant to put nets up to stop them but that just looks so dreadful amongst the petunias."

She was supporting Sherlock by the left elbow now, something he'd have found intolerably annoying were he not in a sorry enough state to actually need the stability. As she spoke she began to gently guide him in the direction of the house's arched entryway.

"Yoohoo!" she called as they walked. "Harold, dear! We've a guest!"

"Maude decided to visit after all, did she?" an American-accented voice replied from somewhere near the open front window. Sherlock noted the shift of patterned lace curtains as whoever was inside moved away from what was presumably a sitting area towards the front door.

"Oh, no, she's still sick off those Mexican pears," Mrs. Hudson replied, sounding as if she didn't entirely sympathise with this 'Maude' character's plight. "I did tell her not to buy anything from that Hispanic fellow, but what can you do?" she added to Sherlock, who merely blinked down at her in blank confusion. What did pears or old womens' purchasing decisions have to do with him?

"Who're we entertaining, then?"

Ahead of them the screen door of the front porch opened, revealing an elder gentleman with a head of thick white hair, wire-frame spectacles and a close-cropped, sand-and-pepper beard. He raised his eyebrows skeptically as he caught sight of Sherlock leaning unsteadily into Mrs. Hudson's side.

"Trading me in for a younger model?" the man asked with a wry, teasing glance to his wife.

Mrs. Hudson flapped her hand in amused exasperation. "Oh hush, you. This is Sherlock, lad's had a dreadful time of it. Make some use of yourself and have a look at him while I get some tea on, won't you?"

"I'm fine, really," Sherlock piped up. He was beginning to feel uncomfortably as if he'd been thrust into a situation he hadn't signed up for. Who the hell was this man...? Mrs. Hudson's husband, doubtless... but then who exactly was _she_? Just some elderly lady who'd plucked him up off the street and decided to cart him off to her home without so much as a by-your-leave... he should _really_ get the hell out of here before everything had a chance to go pear-shaped.

"He isn't at all," Mrs. Hudson corrected as her husband's eyebrows lifted once more in a questioning look. "Boy's just being stubborn." She turned to Sherlock with a kind smile. "Harold's a doctor, dear, he'll have you patched up in a blink."

With that she patted Sherlock on the shoulder and all but forced him into the support of Harold.

"You'll be wanting milk and sugar, I expect? Oh I haven't had anyone round who could appreciate a good cuppa in ages!" Her cheerful voice trailed off as she disappeared into the house with her shopping swinging merrily from one arm.

Sherlock blinked after her, then glanced over (and _up_, he was somewhat disgruntled to find) to meet the eyes of the man now assisting his balance. Harold flashed a tight smile down at him, one shoulder lifting in a vaguely resigned shrug.

"You'll have to forgive the wife. Stubborn as hell, that woman." Releasing Sherlock's arm he indicated a plastic seat on the porch to their left. "Sit there, then. I'd invite you in but you're covered in mud."

Sherlock didn't bother replying, too occupied with the business of lowering himself to sit down without making it obvious that his stomach muscles were sending spikes of hellfire through his abdomen with every movement. And ugh good lord the bloody _heat_... though, mercifully, the shade of the Hudsons' front deck seemed to be doing a decent job of keeping the ambient temperature at a near-tolerable level.

Harold clicked his tongue in disapproval as he observed the slow progress of the young man in front of him. "You look beat to hell, son. Get yourself mugged?"

"I, er... may have insulted a street gang," Sherlock explained with a slight grimace. He'd finally managed to arrange himself somewhat comfortably in the plastic-padded deck chair and was now trying to stifle the impulse to curl his legs up to his chest. Muddy trainers on the furniture... probably not a good way to ingratiate himself to his hosts.

"Oh! Well, then, that explains why Bunny dragged you home," Harold exclaimed in surprise, apparently catching his accent. "British?"

Sherlock nodded. "London."

"Great city, met Bunny when I was over there for an immunology conference. Could use less traffic, though... Wait right there a minute, I'll grab the first aid kit."

He vanished into the house after his wife, rolling up the sleeves of his smart plaid buttonup as he went. Sherlock waited until the man was out of sight, then curled over on himself in pained discomfort. Argh, if his stupid abdomen would just quit _whingeing_ for a moment perhaps he could gather the strength to make a run for it before this elderly couple abducted him like some sort of disturbing foster grandchild. Not that the thought of a cup of tea and perhaps a bed wasn't unreasonably tempting right now, but he'd been wandering the streets of foreign countries long enough now to have developed a healthy wariness of any sort of volunteered kindness. Especially toward the likes of him.

What did they want? What were they hoping to accomplish with their help? Nothing, maybe... actions most likely rooted in pity for the moment. But when that sympathy waned, what then? After all Sherlock was only being halfway amenable at the moment because he could do literally nothing else. Give him time to heal up a bit and he'd doubtless be right back to his usual impulsive, tactless brand of fuck-up social interaction. Kicked out of their home, fine - he didn't care about that. But he'd really rather they not take it upon themselves to call the authorities...

"Alright, son. Sit up and let me have a look at you."

Sherlock craned his head slightly to regard Harold, who had returned without his noticing and was now standing over him with a professional-looking first aid kit in one hand and a damp washcloth in the other. Around the man's neck was a worn stethoscope.

"Now, to be fair I'm an oncologist," he informed Sherlock as the younger man reluctantly straightened up from his pathetic curled-up position on the chair. "So patching up vagrant kids isn't exactly my specialty... Bunny's adamant, though, so we'll do our best."

"Thank you," Sherlock offered, feeling like he should probably at least make an _attempt_ to not be a complete arse right off the bat. Best to remain civil until the doctor determined whether or not he was likely to die of internal injuries, at any rate.

Harold didn't reply right away - he was too busy studying Sherlock's left arm, which he'd taken hold of to check for a pulse. A look of intense disapproval pulled at his aged features as he regarded the pale limb. With a start Sherlock realised his skin was still marred by a small collection of faded needle scars, clearly visible in his current short-sleeved attire. He made to tug his arm back and was relieved when the man released it without a fuss.

"First stray cats, now she's dragging home junkies," Harold muttered irritably to himself as he turned to dig through his medical kit. Sherlock's expression darkened.

"I'm not a junkie," he snapped defensively.

Harold huffed a sigh as he turned back to his erstwhile charge. "No? Injecting insulin straight into your radial vein, then?" he said in a tone of withering sarcasm. "Listen, son, I've been on city ER rotation more times than I care to remember. You're a drug addict if I ever saw one."

"_Ex_-addict," Sherlock asserted. "I quit four months ago."

"Oh, four whole months!" Harold snorted, plainly unimpressed. "Yeah, yeah. Listen: if I find anything even _resembling_ dope into my home I'll have you locked up faster than you can blink, got that? My wife might have it in her head everyone's a good soul in need of her tender care but I'm not about to end up on the wrong side of a drug war for the sake of some roughed-up street kid."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sherlock retorted with a sneer. The insulted, defiant expression on his face unfortunately lost a lot of its impact when he was forced to drop it in favour of a pained wince - he'd shifted his upper body too quickly and set his muscles cramping again.

Harold's stern features softened marginally. After a short pause he gestured to Sherlock's t-shirt. "Strip that off so I can see, then. Where exactly were you hit?"

A few acutely uncomfortable minutes passed during which Sherlock found himself poked and prodded in a not-entirely-gentle manner as Harold checked him over. The doctor _hemmed _and _hawed_ over whatever information he was managing to pick up through his stethoscope and probing ministrations, disinfecting cuts here and there and applying sticking plasters where appropriate. Sherlock, for his part, simply tried to remain as still as possible.

"Tea, dears! How goes it?" Mrs. Hudson's over-chipper voice cut in. The elderly woman had appeared in the front doorway with a tray full of what looked like tea and biscuits.

"Badly bruised diaphragm but nothing to suggest an internal bleed. Definitely dehydrated, and I'm guessing half-starved." Harold leant back on the stool he'd perched on and nodded matter-of-factly to himself as he accepted a chocolate biscuit from his wife. He flashed Sherlock a smile that didn't quite seem to reach his eyes. "Think you'll live, son."

Sherlock wasn't sure how to respond and settled for a vague nod in lieu of speaking. What now, then...? He didn't suppose he'd be asked to stay, considering the less-than-warm reception of Mrs. Hudson's husband upon catching sight of the needle scars. Would it be rude to ask for a lift back to something approaching a city centre, though? Didn't fancy having to find his own way out of some labyrinthine American suburb. Not in this weather.

His internal questions were promptly rendered moot however when he realised with a start that Mrs. Hudson appeared to have made off with his shirt. Harold laughed good-naturedly at Sherlock's sudden scandalised expression and passed over the tray of biscuits and tea his wife had left with them.

"She'll be back with one of mine, don't worry. Not that you really need a shirt in this weather, eh? Eighty seven degrees last I checked."

A bolt of alarmed confusion shot through Sherlock's brain at the absurdly high number - _eighty seven!?_ - but it waned as quickly as it had come upon remembering the existence of the Fahrenheit scale. Oh, right... Harold meant it was around thirty out. Bloody Americans. With a slight annoyed frown for his own lapse in memory he leant carefully forwards and plucked up what looked like a glass of ice water _(hot tea in this climate... ugh, no thank you) _and a biscuit. Trapped here for the moment, it seemed, unless he wanted to abscond shirtless into the blistering afternoon sun. Might as well make the best of things.

"So how old are you, then? Late teens I'm guessing?" Harold had settled back into his deck chair and was now watching Sherlock eat. A somewhat disconcerting look of intense speculation pierced sharp through the lenses of his spectacles - almost as if he were waiting for his guest to screw up somehow, give him an excuse to toss him out... or worse. Sherlock swallowed and tried not to let the creeping sense of wariness show in his body language.

"Twenty," he supplied.

Harold clucked in disapproval. "And already hooked on heroin? Didn't waste any time, did you?"

"It was cocaine," Sherlock corrected, an offended scowl stealing over his features. "And I only started last year, I was clean before then."

"Except for the cigarettes," Harold countered with a bland nod to the half-empty pack of Marlboros beginning to work its way out of Sherlock's jeans pocket. Sherlock glanced down and shoved the box back out of sight.

"Nicotine doesn't count."

Harold chuckled humourlessly to himself, shaking his head in clear disagreement. Before he could reply however a beaming Mrs. Hudson bustled through the open doorway carrying a small stack of clothing.

"The shirt'll be a bit loose on you, dear, but the trousers should fit. I found an old pair of Joshua's." She said this last to her husband, whose expression darkened fractionally before smoothing back to something more neutral. Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to catch the shift in his demeanour, too distracted by her self-appointed mission of dragging Sherlock out of his seat and towards the door. "Trainers off, then, so you don't track mud in. Now the bathroom's down this way..."

Sherlock was too bewildered to really object as he was led rather forcibly down the hall _(white carpeting, powder blue walls, a multitude of framed photographs and a crimson vase on a table holding a bouquet of white carnations and ferns) _and found himself deposited in a tidy little guest lavatory at the back of the house. Mrs. Hudson patted him happily on the shoulder before turning to leave the room.

"Just set your things on the counter and I'll add them to the wash later!" she called through the door as she closed it behind her. Sherlock was left alone in a strange bathroom clutching an armful of unfamiliar clothing, blinking at a framed arrangement of pressed flowers on the back of the white-washed wooden door now shut in front of his face.

Er... alright then. Apparently he was to have a shower.

Figuring out how the damned faucet worked proved to be a bit of an ordeal, but with a bit of finagling he managed. Half an hour later he emerged feeling much less like he was about to drown in his own perspiration. Clean clothes, too, which proved to be an unexpectedly welcome change. He'd been forced to wear the same outfit for going on three days now, having lost his knapsack to some enterprising young thief during a night spent unadvisedly sleeping on a park bench. Luckily being an accomplished pickpocket himself meant he'd long since taken to carrying his passport and other important documents tucked securely into the waistband of his jeans, money and cigs stowed in a front pocket where he'd be likely to notice them missing. Didn't mean he hadn't been_ severely_ miffed over the loss of his nicotine patches, clothes, and the scant collection of books and other knickknacks he'd been toting around, however.

Though to be perfectly honest he'd been most dismayed to lose his Oxford sweatshirt... ragged and in desperate need of repair it had been, yes, but the thing held some measure of sentimental value. He and that hoodie had been through a lot together, after all. Accepting the reality of never seeing it again had formed a large portion of his dawdling in finding a thrift shop to replace his belongings. Perhaps he could find the thief, he'd thought - accost them and get his things back...? Couldn't be _that_ difficult. How far could they have gotten?

But of course Tallahassee was an enormous, spread-out jumble of a city, and no matter how much Sherlock wandered the back streets looking for a likely suspect he'd come up empty-handed. Sniping back at a heckling street gang as he passed their corner had been an act of frustration in his final hours of fruitless searching. An impulsive choice which, as per usual, had landed him in far more dire straits than he'd started out with.

Say what one would about the numerous downsides of cocaine, but the longer Sherlock went without the stuff the more he found himself desperately missing that blessed peace of knowing he wasn't about to do something enormously stupid with each and every decision. Without the enforced self-discipline of drugs he was back to that age-old game of roulette; just waiting moment by moment to see how badly he'd fucked himself over this time.

Being on his own and thus relatively free of the hassle of human interaction mitigated the usual bouts of crippling social anxiety, granted, but a certain baseline level of stress still lingered. Too many opportunities for him to ruin things, too many thoughtless actions sneaking through before he could exert enough willpower to stop them. Seemed there was nothing for it, though... he'd simply have to get used to living in constant dread of his own idiocy.

But that was fine, really... he'd dealt with it well enough before discovering coke, hadn't he? That feeling of sick trepidation and wary mistrust of himself had defined his life for _years. _Just because he now knew how easy things could be didn't mean he wasn't still fully capable of accepting the inherent difficulties of his existence.

The trousers Mrs. Hudson had foisted on him were actually quite comfortable - loose khaki-type things - and the t-shirt was indeed oversized but softer than the one he'd been wearing before and not entirely unbecoming. _(Though the logo of some cancer foundation emblazoned on the front was a rather distractingly garish shade of violet on white.)_ He didn't bother trying to find a comb for his hair, which had by this point grown long enough to actually need one, and instead did his best to pick out the tangles with his fingers while he cautiously stuck his head around the open bathroom door in search of his hosts.

Within minutes of the shower faucet shutting off Mrs. Hudson appeared in the hall.

"Oh, much better!" she exclaimed cheerfully, catching sight of him. "You do make a handsome sight without all the mud."

He furrowed his brows slightly (_handsome...? was she mocking him?_) and turned his attention toward the laundry bag in her hands. She smiled blithely and bustled past him to scoop his discarded garments into it, leaving the small pile of miscellaneous objects he'd emptied out of his pockets untouched on the tiled countertop.

"Now I expect you're knackered, so don't worry about sitting down for supper. I'll bring something in for you." Gesturing for him to pick up his belongings (cigarettes, lighter, passport and travel documents along with a scant few dollars in change and a handful of random baubles) she herded him down the hall once more and into what appeared to be a spare bedroom. The décor was mostly done up in pale blues and greens, with the same white carpeting as the rest of the house and a tan quilted bedspread. He paused in the doorway, only just now noticing that the air indoors was a very comfortable 20-odd degrees and that the sweltering humidity that had plagued him ever since his first ill-advised foray toward the southern states seemed to have vanished. _Air conditioning_, he realised... christ, what a godsend.

"This is Joshua's old room," Mrs. Hudson informed him. For the first time since he'd met her the energetic smile on her aged face seemed to droop a few notches. She took a step forward and gently touched a framed photograph sitting on the nightstand.

Sherlock followed her into the room (slowly, still, as his stomach hadn't stopped aching) and regarded the picture over her shoulder. A young man in perhaps his late teens or early twenties, with short reddish-brown hair, wide celery green eyes and a face full of freckles stood grinning in a set of graduation robes with a rolled-up diploma clutched in his hands.

The freckles and general shape of the face sparked an unexpected flash of memory in Sherlock's mind, and he spoke without really meaning to. "He looks like my ex-boyfriend."

Immediately he scowled at himself and resisted the urge to smack his forehead in exasperation. _Fuck's sake_, what had prompted him to say that? His short, doomed foray into romantic prospects was none of this woman's business._ Particularly_ considering the country he was in, which boasted an exceptionally poor track record of tolerance when it came to same-sex couples. _Learn to keep your bloody mouth shut, idiot._

Mrs. Hudson didn't seem to acknowledge his gaffe, though. Instead she just smiled wistfully and hummed a little to herself. "He was a good lad, Joshua. Harold's sister's boy. We took him in when his parents passed, bless their souls. Lived here for about five years before, well..."

"He died?" Sherlock asked, forgetting in his lingering irritation with himself to try and be tactful.

"Oh no, dear!" Mrs. Hudson exclaimed with a short laugh. "No, no... well, not that I know of, anyway! Last I heard he was in Michigan. He and Harold had a bit of row, you see, and he left last August. I do miss the boy terribly."

"Oh." Sherlock frowned and wondered if this meant he was being appropriated as some sort of bizarre replacement nephew. Supposed it didn't matter if he was... still meant free food and a bed, after all.

"Now Sherlock, you just lie down and get some rest." Again with the steering him about, Mrs. Hudson all but forced him into a sitting position on the bedspread. If she weren't a pleasant little old lady he'd have verbally eviscerated her by now for all the uninvited touching. As things were he was merely starting to get a tad annoyed... not quite enough to say anything, though. Too tired and sore to bother.

Humming to herself, Mrs. Hudson left the room with her laundry bag. Presumably she was off to see to the wash. Sherlock watched her until she was gone from his line of sight, then glanced over to the photograph of Joshua again.

In all objectivity the man really didn't look _that _similar to Eric. It was just the freckles... perhaps the shape of the eyes at a stretch. Sherlock frowned deeply and reached out to turn the frame so it was facing the other way regardless. He'd been doing well these past few months in avoiding any thought of the brief period he'd spent in Stockwell. Resisting the all-too-frequent temptation to look up how his former partner was faring, find out what he was doing with his life. Had he invested the money Sherlock had given him wisely? Gone back to school, or perhaps bought a house... started a business? There had been more than enough cash to do any of those things and more.

Discovering the answers wouldn't be difficult - commandeer a library PC for a few hours, break into some government records, (perhaps screw around with one of Mycroft's projects while he was at it) - but it wouldn't help anything. Sherlock would only be reminded of the life he'd left behind... too tempted to book the next flight back to England, seek out Eric and apologise until they could be together again. For good, this time.

Ugh but _no. _It would never happen, you bloody idiot. Stop dwelling on stupid nonsense.

Removing his hand from the photo frame he dumped his collection of items on the table beside it and let himself flop (gently) into the fluffed pillows of the unfamiliar bed. Eric hadn't liked _him_, he reminded himself sternly - he'd only liked the person Sherlock was with cocaine. Same as everyone else did. Without drugs Sherlock Holmes was nothing more than an impulsive, tactless git with a head full of useless knowledge and zero common sense. Bullied and shunned for the majority of his life, and rightly so, because he tended to behave like a complete lunatic while sober. Eric would tire of his eccentrics within a week and then he'd be right back where he'd started: facing the inexorable choice between social isolation and chemical dependency.

He'd already been down one of those paths. And being an addict hadn't worked in the slightest, so he was left with the former option as his sole recourse. Which meant that thinking of Eric - or anyone back home, really - was nothing but a pointless waste of time. Only logical action was to stop immediately.

Sherlock rolled over onto his side with his back facing the nightstand and forced himself to do maths in his head as a distraction. Chemical reactions, physics...

He barely made it through half a dozen equations before his eyes began to slip shut of their own volition.

For the second time in as many hours he lost himself to slumber.

**««**


	3. Three

**««**

The first thing Sherlock became aware of was a disgusting, metallic taste in his mouth and a niggling itch in his throat. Following that there was the sensation of a blanket tucked neatly around his shoulders, a pillow under his head, weak light filtering through his eyelids... and above all else a deep, insistent desire for a cigarette.

He frowned and reluctantly opened his eyes. All around him the soft palette of an unfamiliar bedroom stood bathed in the cheerful bright light of an early spring morning. Sunshine fell in stripes over his midsection through the slats of half-opened venetian blinds, a sense of peaceful tranquillity seeming to cloak the very air. The entire house was quiet and still, faint chirping warble of birdsong outside the only sound to break the silence.

At some point during the night someone had covered him with a thin, sage-green quilt, which for whatever subconscious reason he'd tugged partially over his head in his sleep. The fabric now draped across his face smelled vaguely of moth balls and that peculiar earthlike scent of wooden storage chests. Not entirely unpleasant, but he shoved it away regardless. Too strong a sensation to process this early in the morning.

Moving turned out to be a rather poor idea - every muscle in his body seemed to have gone sore and stiff overnight. He gasped a tiny hiss of pain upon attempting to uncurl his midsection and immediately went still again. Alright, wait, wait... probably best to take things slowly. Or... perhaps not at all? The thought of simply refusing to move ever again was sorely tempting; he could just tug the blanket over his head again and go back to sleep, wouldn't that be easiest? Ignore the whole problem until it went away of its own accord. Maybe then this uncomfortable scratch in his throat would fade away as well.

The portion of his brain responsible for being absolutely dependent on nicotine didn't seem too keen on that plan, however. Barely a minute had passed before he found himself grimacing against the stabbing ache caused by rolling over onto his back. Blindly he tossed out an arm for his cigarettes and lighter abandoned on the bedside table the afternoon previous. Just one fag, his nicotine-starved brain insisted, then he could curl back up in bed.

Instead of the smooth cardboard of a cig packet, though, his hand bumped into what felt like a ceramic plate. He opened one eye from the squinting wince his face had twisted into and glanced over, trying to figure out what exactly he was touching. It was indeed a covered serving dish, with a note neatly folded atop it.

Confused, he snatched up the small card from its place on the white china and rubbed his eyes tiredly as he tried to decipher the lines of tidy, over-embellished handwriting decorating cream-coloured paper.

_Sherlock -_

_Harold's off to the hospital for the day and I've some errands to run. I'll be back in an hour or so - make yourself at home. And do try to eat something, you're far too thin for a boy your age!_

_Mrs. Hudson_

He blinked at the message a few times in blank befuddlement _(what did his weight matter to anyone?)_ then turned his attention to the serving dish. A careful upward nudge of the lid revealed a tray full of sliced fruits, a small bowl of some sort of oatmeal mixture and what appeared to be a boiled egg. A glass of once-chilled orange juice stood on a woven coaster next to it.

Sherlock wasn't particularly hungry - he rarely was first thing in the morning - but he grabbed a few slices of fruit and the glass of juice regardless as he retrieved his cigarette pack. Muscles protesting vehemently but he managed to drag himself to a sitting position without undue fuss. Mrs. Hudson had gone to the trouble of attempting to feed him, might as well take advantage of it. He scrubbed a hand through his hair _(fluffed up in messy ringlet curls now thanks to having slept on it wet... Mycroft used to tell him he looked like a sheep when it did that) _and, yawning, stood up to shuffle blearily toward the front porch.

The morning was admittedly rather gorgeous. It seemed he'd slept for a ridiculous length of time - it was now well past sunrise, the light shimmering over dew-coated grass, air not yet given the chance to heat up to that unbearable sweltering temperature he'd grown to so thoroughly despise. Must be going on seven in the morning, he guessed... could have found out for sure but he wasn't motivated enough to bother finding a clock. Not like the exact time was important, anyway. All that mattered was that it was early, quiet... and cool enough to bloody_ breathe_.

He ate the few slices of apple he'd picked up, listening to the birds chirping high in the trees. Swatting irritably at a passing mosquito he leant his elbows on the railing of the deck and finally got round to lighting a cigarette. With the first inhale a tide of blessed nicotine washed through his consciousness; dense fogbanks of fatigue and a small fraction of general aching soreness from his muscles ebbed away with the flow of chemicals. He took a sip of juice to rinse out the general disgusting taste of sleep, stale blood, and tobacco from his mouth, coughed into the crook of his elbow, then slouched his body forward over the deck rail to stare out at the garden.

Over in the far corner a small flock of sparrows were busy making off with the majority of Mrs. Hudson's blueberries. He took another drag off his cig and idly watched their antics. One of the larger ones appeared to be trying to browbeat a younger bird out of the way of the largest berry clusters, all frenzied chirping and sharp talons. Violent little bastard.

"Hey! Who're you!?"

Sherlock startled badly and snapped his eyes away from the bickering sparrows, the entire flock taking flight in a sudden flurry of wings in response to the shout of a childish voice. There in the middle of the stone walkway off to his right stood a young girl, perhaps six or seven years old, with honey blonde hair cut in an off-centre bob and a grass-stained yellow sun dress. She was holding a flower-patterned knapsack in her arms and frowning at him suspiciously.

"Are you Mrs. Hudson's grandson or something?" she asked without giving him a chance to answer her initial question. Her short hair bounced slightly as she looked him up and down with an appraising expression on her small face.

"No, just a houseguest," Sherlock explained. He glanced to the cigarette in his hand and shifted his wrist so it was at least partially hidden from sight - didn't fancy having to explain what it was to a primary school child. "Er... Mrs. Hudson's not in right now."

For some reason the girl's expression brightened at the sound of his voice. "You talk funny just like she does!"

Sherlock frowned. "It's not 'talking funny', it's an English accent."

"_Towk_-ing," the girl mimicked with a giggle. "What's your name?"

"... Sherlock," he replied, voice slightly distracted as he attempted to surreptitiously pinch out his half-finished fag behind his back and tapped the unburnt tobacco out into the flowerbed below. He hesitated a moment before shoving the spent filter into his trouser pocket - didn't want to drop it into the garden... hopefully the fabric wouldn't absorb the scent of smoke.

"'Sherlock'...?" the little girl repeated dubiously. "That's a weird name."

"I'm aware," he deadpanned. Looking up, he realised she'd been walking forward the entire time they'd been speaking and was now standing on the grass just below him. A set of wax-and-wire orthodontics flashed like metal scaffolding on her teeth as she fixed him with a wide, enthusiastic smile.

"Sounds kinda like a superhero! _Sherlock, the Avenger!_" She giggled again and shoved her knapsack onto the porch through a space in the railings, then followed it up by climbing through the adjacent slat. "I like it!"

"... Really?" Sherlock asked, furrowing his brows with a puzzled blink. That... wasn't quite the reaction he was used to.

"My name's Hayley," the girl informed him. She'd unzipped her bag and was now pulling out what appeared to be a florescent pink tea set made entirely of moulded plastic. Each piece was set reverently on the small patio table standing between the Hudsons' deck chairs.

Sherlock turned and leant on the porch railing as he watched Hayley unpack her satchel. She seemed to have an entire collection of tiny pink china. "What are you doing?"

"Mrs. Hudson said we could have a tea party today so I brought my tea stuff!" Hayley explained cheerfully. "You're a boy and boys are icky but you can be in the tea party too cause you talk like Mrs. Hudson."

"It's... nowhere near tea time," Sherlock countered, beginning to feel a bit bewildered. Who was this girl and what on earth was she doing here? Belatedly it occurred to him that perhaps asking her directly might be the best way of finding those things out. "Why are you wandering about the neighbourhood at this hour? Do your parents know you're out?"

Hayley scoffed childishly up at him. "_Duh_, yes! Mrs. Hudson teaches me reading and stuff on Thursday mornings."

"You don't learn that in school?"

The girl rolled her eyes and took a few steps toward Sherlock to take uninvited hold of his hand. He startled as she began tugging him insistently toward her tea set with enough force that he nearly overbalanced.

"Daddy says school fills your head with Satan's lies," she informed him matter-of-factly. Sherlock blinked and tried not to look too unsettled... _was she bloody serious...?_ A half second later however he gave up and just fixed her with a disturbed expression. Oh sod being age-appropriate. This wasn't _his_ child - he had no responsibility to entertain religious delusions for the sake of not traumatising her. Particularly not when she was now literally _forcing_ him to have a seat at her garishly-coloured tea set.

"Your father is an insane person," he told her seriously. Hayley had finally succeeded in getting him to sit in a deck chair and shoved an undersized plastic teacup into his hands. The accompanying saucer was moulded to look like a circlet of tiny flower petals.

"Nah, he just loves Jesus a whole lot." She smiled blithely up at him, completely ignoring the disgusted, vaguely alarmed look on his face, and bent down to produce a teddy bear wearing a frilly lace dress from her knapsack. With reverent care she placed it on his right thigh and patted its furry head with a self-satisfied little nod. "This is Clarabelle, she's a real Southern lady so be polite."

Sherlock had no idea how she expected him to offend a stuffed bear. Neither, for that matter, could he fathom why the thing had to be _on his lap_ of all places. His attempt to relocate it to the table was met with a savage glare from Hayley, however, and fearing she'd retaliate with a tantrum he quickly put it back where she'd left it. Far too early in the morning to deal with a small child screeching at him over moving her toy, he decided. Best just go along with things.

With the bear safely replaced Hayley turned her attention to pouring the contents of a butterfly-patterned thermos into the pink teapot, humming a happy tune to herself.

"Mister Sherlock, would you like some tea?" she asked in an extremely poor imitation of an aristocratic accent. She held the now-full teapot out to him with her hands arranged in what she evidently thought was proper pouring form - obviously parroted from some television programme or the like, it mostly just looked ridiculous.

"You're doing that all wrong," Sherlock told her before he could think not to. When Hayley's ecstatic expression melted into a pout he deliberated for an awkward second before setting his little plastic teacup down to take the pot from her. Sod it... might as well show her how it was meant to be done. Wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time. "You have to hold the lid so it doesn't spill, see? Like this."

Hayley's eyes lit up as he properly poured the tea _(was it, though...? no, couldn't be, it was some sort of cloudy off-yellow liquid; juice, maybe) _into her cup for her. She hopped up and down a few times in excitement.

"Oh! Neat, do it again!"

Sherlock couldn't quite stop a small bemused smile as he poured a cup of whatever-it-was for himself as well, then handed the pot back to Hayley. She mimicked his actions with a huge grin on her face and poured out a third cup, which she then shoved abruptly toward her teddy bear. Sherlock was forced to grab the saucer with his unoccupied hand before it could spill all over his trousers. Hayley nudged at the cup until he'd relented to holding it in place at approximately the level of the bear's forelegs.

"You gotta stick your pinkie up like this when you drink so it's fancier." In demonstration Hayley took a sip of her beverage with her smallest finger extended comically out like a flag. Sherlock bit back a small laugh and, deciding it couldn't hurt anything to play along for the moment, obligingly copied her.

"This is grapefruit juice," he realised as he took a small sip. Hayley shot him an offended look from her place across the table.

"Nuh uh, it's _tea_," she asserted haughtily. "Cause we're having a tea party."

"No... this is definitely grapefruit juice." Sherlock took another sip and scrunched his face up a bit for the sour taste. "It's not even very good grapefruit juice."

Hayley opened her mouth to retort, but was distracted by the sound of a car pulling up at the other end of the house. Sherlock looked up and was vaguely mortified to see Mrs. Hudson climbing out of her vehicle. The elderly woman was busy patting out the wrinkles in her floral-patterned dress as she walked up the path to her front door.

"Hi, Mrs. Hudson!" Hayley exclaimed cheerfully. In reply Mrs. Hudson looked up toward the porch with a smile... then stopped in her tracks and put a hand to her mouth in a poor attempt to cover a burst of laughter. Sherlock could feel his cheeks flushing. Here he was sat in a deck chair in his bare feet, hair fluffed up like a bloody sheep, holding a pink cup of juice with one hand while the other supported a flower-shaped saucer for the benefit of a frilly-dressed bear. _Oh lord please don't let her have a camera handy._

Mrs. Hudson started walking again, still chuckling, and fixed an indulgent smile on the both of them. "Having a tea party, dears?"

"It's a grapefruit juice party," Sherlock corrected in an embarrassed mumble. He coughed slightly as he set aside his garish pink cup along with the bear's. Across the table Hayley huffed indignantly at him.

"It's _tea_," she snapped, then turned to Mrs. Hudson instead. "Sherlock's bad at pretending."

"Oh I'm sure he just needs practise is all," Mrs. Hudson assured the little girl. She stifled another laugh at Sherlock's aggrieved look and, reaching their spot on the porch, bent down to pick up Hayley's miniature teapot. "How about we fill this with something more proper, hm?"

"Yeah!" Hayley exclaimed happily.

"I'll, er... just go back to-" Sherlock started, making to rise from his seat, but Mrs. Hudson cut him off with a sharp tut.

"We'll be having none of that, young man. Did you eat your breakfast?"

"Um," Sherlock paused... couldn't exactly _lie_, not when the tray was still clearly full back in her guest bedroom...

"Of course not," Mrs. Hudson answered for him with a small exasperated shake of her head. "Well, come on then, both of you inside. We'll cook up a nice proper meal together."

"Cooking!" Hayley echoed in an excited shout. She sprang up from her chair, grabbed Sherlock's hand and proceeded to drag him bodily off toward the front door. Once again he just barely managed to avoid landing face-first on the wooden deck - the girl's centre of gravity was far lower than his and apparently perfectly calibrated to pull him right off balance.

"Be polite, please, Hayley!" Mrs. Hudson admonished from behind them. "You'll have poor Sherlock's arm off if you tug any harder."

"Oh." Hayley glanced over her shoulder, meeting Sherlock's annoyed glare, and flashed him a sheepish grin. He extricated his hand from her viselike grip and straightened up into a more normal standing position, only to have her latch onto the side of his trousers instead.

Mrs. Hudson just chuckled again at their subsequent silent bickering over what exactly constituted not being an obnoxious leech of a child _(why did she feel a need to be grabbing him at all times!?)_ and herded them both into the house ahead of her.

Sherlock soon found himself set with the task of slicing fruit in the cool morning atmosphere of the Hudsons' kitchen. Beside him Hayley was enthusiastically stirring a bowl full of pancake batter. Mrs. Hudson had bustled off to retrieve something or other - related to Hayley's reading lesson, he'd gathered, but she hadn't really explained beyond that.

"Is Mrs. Hudson teaching you how to read too?" Hayley piped up. She was seconds away from knocking her bowl of mix over with the frenzied intensity of her stirring - Sherlock reached over to steady it before it could topple off the counter.

"I already know how to read." He frowned as she continued with the manic insanity of what she apparently thought 'stirring' looked like. "Stop flailing like a lunatic, you're going to spill batter all over."

Hayley stopped her activity and looked up at him with a confused expression. A second later she turned back to her bowl and began to stir the batter again in excruciatingly slow, careful circles.

"Is she teaching you math, then?" she continued. Her tongue had poked out from between her teeth as she apparently concentrated all her efforts on stirring properly.

Sherlock rolled his eyes and went back to slicing up an apple. "No."

"French?"

"I'm fluent in French."

Hayley was starting to look confused. "Why're you here if she's not teaching you stuff?"

"I have no idea," Sherlock admitted in a vaguely irritated monotone. He stopped slicing apples for a moment to sneeze into the crook of his elbow, grimacing for the accompanying painful spasm of his abdomen. Ugh... the scratchy discomfort from earlier had progressed into a full-blown sore throat now. Of all the rotten bloody luck, he just _had _to come down with a cold on top of everything else.

"Daddy says sneezing is when the devil leaves your body," Hayley informed him cheerfully. He fixed her with a disgruntled expression.

"You're going to grow up to be one of those psychotic evangelical tragedies of a human being, aren't you?"

Hayley just blinked up at him, bewildered. After a pause she seemed to give up on deciphering what he'd said and just answered the bits she understood. "I'm gonna be a zoo keeper."

Sherlock snorted to himself. "Clearly."

"What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

"I'm already grown up," Sherlock replied blandly, moving on to slicing up an orange now. Hayley seemed to have completely forgotten about stirring her pancake batter and was just holding onto the wooden spoon like some sort of boat rudder. She looked him up and down again.

"So what are you then?"

Sherlock paused. "I'm..." he trailed off, looking down at her. What _was _he...? A chemist, once, but he'd abandoned that path ages ago. A drug addict...? Not anymore, not if he could help it. A traveller, then... a vagrant. Some sort of ghostlike, wasted potential of genius.

... nothing.

With a shake of his head he swallowed down another cough and turned his attention back to the fruit on the cutting board. "... I don't know."

Hayley gave him a miffed look. "You can't _not know_ what you are, that's dumb."

"_You're_ dumb," Sherlock retorted childishly. Hayley stuck her tongue out at him and in a fit of pique he retaliated in kind.

"Oh honestly! Am I going to have to separate you two?" Mrs. Hudson's amused voice drifted into the kitchen behind them. She'd finally returned bearing a small stack of books and a tape recorder in her arms, which she deposited on the patterned cloth of her dining table.

"Sherlock started it!" Hayley cried, pointing an accusing finger at him.

"I did not, you liar," Sherlock snapped.

Mrs. Hudson just shook her head. "Go on and set the table, then. I'll finish up here."

She shooed her guests away from the counters with a stack of cutlery, and Sherlock was reduced to the task of trying to get Hayley to stop rearranging the forks and knives so every place ended up with multiples of the same implement. Soon enough everything was in order, and Mrs. Hudson presented each of them with a plate of blueberry pancakes, sliced fruit, and cottage cheese. Hayley dug into her meal like a starving waif while Sherlock merely picked at his with a fork. He _really_ wasn't hungry.

"Sherlock, dear, if you don't start eating properly I'm going to have to ask Harold to bring home one of those feeding tube contraptions."

Sherlock looked up from where he'd been prodding at a pancake. "I'm fine."

"Nuh uh you're super skinny!" Hayley chimed in. Sherlock shot a glare her way.

"No one asked you."

"_Behave_, both of you," Mrs. Hudson said sternly. Sherlock and Hayley both shut their mouths and snapped their gazes toward her, only to be met with a fond smile. "Let's just have a nice meal and then get on with our reading lesson, shall we?"

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," Hayley chirped, returning to her food.

"Why would I need a reading le-" Sherlock started, but Mrs. Hudson raised her eyebrows in clear disapproval and he cut himself off. With a frown he looked back down at his breakfast, huffed a bit, and speared a square of pancake. Well... at the very least it tasted better than his usual bin-scrounged fare.

Twenty minutes later their plates had all been cleared away and Sherlock was trapped at the table with Mrs. Hudson and an overenthusiastic little girl as they got to the business of choosing a book to read. Stifling the intermittent coughs of his irritated throat was beginning to get the better of him, much to his displeasure. If there was one thing he hated more than being ill it was _letting on_ that he was ill - but try as he might the bruised diaphragm and sore jaw were making it difficult to be subtle.

"Oh Sherlock, are you not feeling well?" Mrs. Hudson asked with a pitying pat of his hand. He'd been right in the middle of trying not to cough and ended up jerking his limb away from her in an instinctual startle reflex - forcing back the accompanying vicious glare took an enormous amount of willpower. Ugh, was there a polite way to ask someone not to touch you unexpectedly?

"It's nothing," he answered a bit more snappishly than he'd intended. Across the table Hayley grinned; the metal wires on her teeth made her face seem oddly mechanical.

"He's got a _cold!_" she crowed happily. "Daddy says-"

"That a benign viral infection indicates some sort of demonic possession by Satan, thank you for the scintillating insight," Sherlock sniped before she could finish her sentence. Mrs. Hudson shot him a sharp look and he slouched down in his seat in vague chastisement.

Hayley didn't seem the least bit perturbed, however. "No it's cause you didn't pray enough."

Mrs. Hudson smiled sweetly _(though the expression seemed a tad forced)_ at the girl before turning back to Sherlock. She'd just opened her mouth to say something when a shrill ringing cut through the quiet background noise of the house.

"Oh! That'll be the phone," the elderly woman exclaimed. She rose from her chair and paused to wag a finger at them. "You two _behave yourselves_."

With that she disappeared into the other room.

"What book do you wanna read?" Hayley piped up immediately. "I like the one about the fish."

Sherlock bit out a sigh and let himself slide further down in his chair. God, he was beginning to get a nicotine headache. Shouldn't have wasted half that cigarette. He covered his eyes with a hand and tried not to dwell on the looming prospect of having a smoke while his throat felt like sandpaper. "I don't care."

_"Oh my lord, is he alright!?" _

Sherlock and Hayley's heads both snapped up at the sound of Mrs. Hudson's exclamation. They glanced back at each other in tandem before Hayley jumped up from her seat to rush toward her tutor. Sherlock bounded after her and caught the girl around the midsection before she could burst screeching in on what sounded like a fairly serious conversation.

"Lemme go!" Hayley smacked ineffectually at his arm.

Sherlock shushed her with an annoyed scowl and carefully poked his head round the edge of the doorframe. In the hall Mrs. Hudson was standing with the phone pressed tight to her ear, covering her mouth with a teary-eyed expression. Hayley twisted around in Sherlock's grip and peered around the corner as well.

"What's going on?" she asked in a whisper.

Sherlock furrowed his brows as details picked themselves stark white out of the kind old woman's appearance. _Posture, facial expression, stricken tears... touching her wedding ring._

"Something's happened to her husband."

**««**


	4. Four

**««**

"It'll just be a few hours, dear, they said he'd likely be free to leave by noon."

"But I don't think-"

"Oh hush, honestly. You'll be fine."

"But-"

Mrs. Hudson turned, purse in one hand and keys in the other, and fixed Sherlock with a stern, no-nonsense expression. He snapped his mouth shut on instinct, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed shirt as he stood awkwardly in the hallway with Hayley clinging to the back of his trousers.

"Sherlock, my husband's just been assaulted. I've been asked to go see him, and I'm not about to bring a little girl into a hospital where there's all manner of diseases lurking about. Not to mention you're coming down with something and we hardly need to be spreading a cold round to all those sickly patients, now do we?"

"You're planning to leave_ someone else's child _in the care of a twenty year old vagrant you just met _yesterday!_" Sherlock's voice came out a bit of a scandalised yelp, overwhelmed by the absurdity of it all. "That's insane! I could be a... a murderer, or something! I could be mad! I _am_ mad!"

"You're not _mad_," Mrs. Hudson replied with a half roll of her eyes. "You're a very responsible young man and I've utmost faith in you." Sherlock opened and shut his mouth a few times, trying to come up with a coherent response besides _you're bleeding mental_, while Mrs. Hudson bent down to address the girl hiding half-behind his legs. "Now Hayley, dear, be a good girl for Sherlock, won't you? I'll only be gone a few hours. You can show him round the house, hm? Read a few of your books?"

Hayley nodded shyly. "Okay Mrs. Hudson."

"I- I could just leave!" Sherlock tried, his last ditch effort to get the woman to see sense. Because _honestly_ this was _not _an acceptable solution to Hayley's parents being unavailable - trusting a bloody _homeless ex-junkie _with criminal tendencies and a forged passport to look after a little girl was a horrendous act of negligence. "I could walk out right now and no one would ever even know I was here! She'd be all alone!"

"You won't, though." Snatching up a light crochet jumper _(the hell did she need one for in this weather?)_ the elderly woman bustled off toward the front door. Nothing Sherlock said could seem to penetrate past her single-minded mission to see her husband. "Ring the hospital if you have any trouble, dears, the number's by the phone! I'll just be a tick!"

And with that she was gone.

Sherlock remained standing in the hall, expression caught between sheer outrage and a sort of creeping horror. Oh no oh god he'd been left alone with a _child_ and it was entirely _his responsibility _to make sure she didn't die or injure herself or burn the place down and no no_ no no no _who ever said he was cut out for something like this!?

"I hope Mr. Hudson's not hurt too bad." Hayley's chirping voice cut into the short stretch of silence which had settled over them in the wake of Mrs. Hudson's departure. Sherlock barely heard her, still staring at the door. The girl looked up to her erstwhile caretaker with a frown and tugged on his trousers to get his attention. "Hey, what's _ass-all-ted _mean anyways?"

"It means someone attacked him," Sherlock explained vaguely. He glanced down at the little girl, then back up to the door, brought an arm up to his face to smother a cough and grimaced. Oh _hell _talk about a bloody pile-up of shit... alright, but, well... fuck, hang on... first things first, right? But then no no no oh god he didn't even _know_ what should come first! He'd never looked after a child in his life! This was completely mad!

Dropping his arm Sherlock bit nervously at his lip, scrubbed fingers through tangled hair, then looked down to Hayley. She was blinking up at him with a curious, slightly confused expression on her round little face.

"Is that bad, then?" she asked when it became clear he wasn't going to elaborate on the definition. "Cause you look kinda freaked out."

"I- what?" Sherlock realised his hands were currently tangled up in his hair like a nutter. Self-consciously he shifted them to his trouser pockets instead, tried to appear less like he was about to have a panic attack over something so stupid as being entrusted with the care of a young person. This _wasn't_ a big deal. It wasn't. _Really._ "I'm not_ freaked ou-_ why would I be... ugh, no. I'm... fine. Everything's fine."

"If you're scared you can just say so, you know." Hayley gave him a concerned look and patted his thigh in a childish gesture of comfort. "Daddy says it's important to let the demons out when they get inside your brains and the only way they can get out is if you tell somebody they're there. So you should just say so if you're scared."

Sherlock scrunched up his face in a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "Are you suggesting _emotions _are caused by...? Ugh, no, don't answer that. Your entire sense of reason's been tainted by parental psychosis."

Hayley didn't react to his words beyond a slightly befuddled smile, apparently her default response whenever he said something she couldn't quite process. And, hrm... but she _was _rather resilient in the face of most anything he said to her, wasn't she? Maybe it would be easiest just to speak to her as a fellow adult, then... treat her as if she were an accomplice in this whole absurd situation? Was that even _allowed? _Probably not. Should try regardless, though, as it was just about the only way he could think of to find a second opinion on what to bloody _do_ with her because damned if he had any clue whatsoever.

"Alright... look," he started. As he spoke he finally took a step away from the spot he'd been rooted to for the last five minutes, cast about for a direction to move in. Where...? Kitchen, back to the kitchen. That was closest. "I'm not... freaked out, or _scared_, or whatever, because there's nothing to be scared of and that would be moronic." Reaching the dining table he all but shoved the girl into the same seat she'd occupied for breakfast, then took the chair across from her.

"But you're acting super freaky," Hayley pointed out with a frown.

"I am not- that's-" Sherlock huffed, ruffled his hair again, then leant his elbows on the table and rubbed at his forehead. Ugh, christ, he was really going to need a cigarette before too long. "That's _anxiety. _And I am justifiably _anxious_ because I've never been called upon to look after a child before, I have no idea what to do, and I don't feel it was wise of Mrs. Hudson to put her trust in me so quickly."

Hayley just gave him a confused look. "You're scared 'cause you don't know how to take care of kids?"

"Yes!" Sherlock threw his hands up. Thank god, she actually seemed to be able to understand a portion of what was said to her. "There's this whole mess of _rules_ and things concerning how you're supposed to interact with children but I don't know any of them and it's not like I can just copy what my _parents_ did when I was your age because that would be horrendous and my brother and I spent most of our time together having _science_ lectures which would probably classify as Satanic under your mad little indoctrinated mental paradigm so that's out too and I just..." He huffed and dropped his arms to his sides, fixing Hayley with an aggrieved look. "I'm _really_ not the right person for this."

Hayley scrunched her face up and drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Well... usually when I have babysitters and stuff they just play games with me. So I guess do that?"

Sherlock shook his head and grimaced around another cough. "_Children's_ games, I'm guessing? Which I've never played. No. _God _this is ridiculous."

"You never...?" Hayley echoed with a bewildered look. "You mean like tag and hopscotch and stuff? You never played those?"

"Of course not." Sherlock shoved a hand through his hair again, then leant partially forwards as he tried to elaborate. How much of his intended meaning was actually managing to get through Hayley's juvenile little mental processor was a complete mystery, but he didn't much care. So long as she got _some_ of it, that was good enough. "Look, I had a... a_ less than ideal_, shall we say, childhood. I didn't have regular contact with anyone my own age until I was sent to boarding school at thirteen and no one there would have been caught dead playing _tag_, or conkers or whatever it is normal children do to waste time between classes. Not with me at any rate."

Hayley's face was now a comical picture of exaggerated pity. "What about hide-an-go-seek?"

"Hide and what?" Sherlock asked, blinking. Had he ever...? No. Read about it, though, maybe... that was the one where you had to find people, right?

Across from him Hayley's mouth had dropped open in shock, appalled by his apparent lack of knowledge. Then abruptly her expression shifted into a look of staunch determination. Before Sherlock could say anything else she'd hopped out of her chair, grabbed him by the hand and threw her weight backwards in an ineffectual attempt to drag him from his seat.

"If you don't know how to play hide-an-go-seek then I gotta teach ya 'cause _everyone_ knows how." For some reason this whole issue seemed to be a point of real distress for the girl. Sherlock furrowed his brows and reluctantly allowed her to tug him out of his seat.

"I don't think it's wise to play a game involving _hiding_ when I haven't learnt the layout of the house," he pointed out quite reasonably. Hayley, however, didn't appear to be listening to him - she was far too busy rattling off the rules of hide-and-go-seek over her shoulder as she herded him towards a far wall.

"Okay so you gotta be the seeker first so you can see how to hide good and it's super easy you just cover your face so you can't see nothin' and then you count to a hundred but _no peeking_ and if you don't know how to count to a hundred you can just count to ten ten times and when you're done counting you gotta come find my hiding spot!"

She shoved him face-first into a bare corner of the kitchen. He looked down at her with a flustered, slightly irritated look of exasperation - when the hell had he even indicated that playing a game was the appropriate-? He'd just been asking for her opinion on what to do! But beside him the little girl had put her hands on her hips and was now _glaring _with such venom that Sherlock relented to pressing his face into his forearm against the floral pattern of the wallpaper without daring to object further. Sod it, fine, just avoid sending her into a tantrum.

"If you manage to get yourself injured-" Sherlock started, but Hayley cut over him.

"Count to a hundred!" she ordered sternly. The shift in volume of her voice indicated she'd already darted off toward the hallway. "And no one's allowed to go outside so don't even think about it mister!"

"Why would I-"

_"A hundred!"_

Sherlock bit out an annoyed sigh but reluctantly did as he was told. It was this or continue to sit around fretting about not having any idea what to do with children, after all... might as well go along with things.

Counting turned out to be rather unbearably boring, so to keep himself on-task he began switching languages at every tenth digit. Finally some few minutes later he'd at last gotten to '... _dziewięćdziesiąt dziewięć__...__ sto__'_ and with an irritated huff shoved himself away from the wall. Well _that_ had been utterly tedious. Game was certainly off to a brilliant start, then. What had she said to do next?

Oh, right... apparently now he had to find her. Of course. Couldn't be too difficult.

He turned to lean his back on the wall he'd been counting against _(stifling another cough, ugh his throat might as well be sandpaper)_ and scanned the room around him. Scuff marks from her shoes on the floor, arranged in such a way to suggest she'd sprinted for the hall... he made his way in that direction. Carpet fibres misaligned just_ there_, another few to the right, the decorative cloth on that table sported a slight wrinkle where it hadn't before. She'd tried hiding under the vase arrangement, then, and decided it was too open. Moved on to...? Ah, second door on the left - smudge marks on the handle, hadn't been shut at the same time as the others judging by the divots on the carpet. Had to have gone through there.

Opening that door turned out to lead to a small office-like area Sherlock hadn't seen before. Several framed documents lined the walls above a bookshelf to his right, stacked high with medical texts. A desk dominated the centre of the room with a modestly-sized window to the right open to receive a shaft of morning sunlight. This was clearly Harold's study.

Sherlock paused in the doorway and scanned the area. Very slight shift of the leather rolling chair behind Harold's desk... obviously Hayley had curled up on the seat to stop her legs being visible in the gap between the desk's back and the floor. She was hidden underneath the desktop, then. This wasn't a very challenging game.

Biting back a sigh Sherlock made his way over to the desk. He'd _meant_ to yank the chair out and tell Hayley her idea of hiding was complete rubbish... but before he could do so he found himself distracted by the papers strewn haphazardly over the glossed wood of Harold's workspace. A small pile of documents; patient case studies, it seemed, though none of them recent. The latest was from the mid-nineties. And every one of them had "outcome: deceased" written in the subject header. That was interesting. Odd, perhaps? What had Harold been researching?

Slight snickering coming from below; Hayley evidently thought he'd failed to notice her, perhaps under the impression her clever hiding spot had left him lost and confused. Not bloody likely. Sherlock's face settled into an annoyed frown - focus still trained on the papers strewn across the desktop - and with a free hand he shoved the chair back to reveal the little girl curled up in the seat like a cat.

"Hey!" she cried indignantly. "No fair, that's cheating cause you heard me laugh!"

"I already knew you were there." Sherlock's voice had gone a bit sidetracked as he flipped carefully through the case files, being sure not to move any too far from their original positions. They all seemed to be write-ups of patients who'd had adverse reactions to a particular brand of chemotherapy drug. In red ink Harold had gone through and circled all the dosages mentioned, scrawled notes alongside with comments like _'reasonable? check double', _and a scattering of other illegible fragments hovered around all the passages detailing the progress and possible causes of fatal side-effects.

Probably all to be expected on the desk of an oncologist, cancer treatment research. But then, strangely... a large section in nearly all the papers had been left free of written commentary; the suggestions for alternative treatments were all conspicuously skipped over. And off to the side, a list of pharmaceutical vendors...

"What're you looking at?"

Sherlock blinked over to Hayley. Abruptly he realised he was standing round snooping through some doctor's paperwork for no good reason - probably not the best of behaviours to be role-modelling to a child. He dropped everything back into the exact places he'd found them and took a step away from the table to thwart himself getting distracted by anything else. Honestly, what was with his brain latching on to anything that looked even remotely like a pattern? Fuck's sake he didn't even have a working knowledge of cancer treatments - this was not only none of his business, it was nigh-incomprehensible. Idiot.

"Papers. Nothing important." He flipped a hand dismissively, then quirked a questioning brow down at Hayley as something occurred to him. "I've won the game, then?"

Hayley scoffed. "Uh, _no. _I still gotta find _you_, dummy. Then whoever found the other faster is the winner."

"I found you in less than two minutes, you're not likely to do better than that," Sherlock pointed out, but Hayley was already pushing at his legs to get him to walk towards the hall again.

"Don't be a butt-face!" she snapped. Sherlock obligingly let her herd him back to the kitchen. Once there she positioned herself against the same wall he'd been stood by earlier and shot him a stern look. "Okay so now _I'm_ gonna count and you hide and _don't_ go outside, remember!"

"Alright, alright." Sherlock raised his hands placatingly, rolling his eyes as Hayley shoved her face into her hands against the wall and started counting. Ugh, right then... hiding... in an effort to amuse a child foisted on him by an old lady whom he'd met in the street less than a day ago. Obviously. Good lord this whole situation was absurd.

Hayley was taking her sweet time just getting to ten so Sherlock leisurely ambled out into the hall, considered his options. Well, the room he'd been in this morning had had a closet, hadn't it? He supposed he could... stand in there, or something. It was the only place he could think of right off hand and he didn't much feel like dashing about the house looking for another likely spot. To Joshua's room, then.

The covered meal Mrs. Hudson had left for him still sat on the bedside table next to the rumpled pile of blankets he'd left, so he appropriated another few slices of fruit from the tray to nibble on in hopes they'd take some of the edge off his sore throat. Coughing would doubtless give away his location, after all. Not like he cared, of course... _(though damned if a little girl was going to beat him at such a stupidly simple game - he was four times her age he'd bloody well better win.)_ Opening the sliding closet door without it squeaking proved to be a bit of a trick, but he managed. Closed the mirrored panels behind him, stood in the darkness therein leaning on the far wall with a slice of apple still half-out his mouth. Beginning to feel a bit of a pillock, really. Nothing for it but to wait though... at least it didn't smell too badly of moth balls in here.

His opponent, predictably, was taking bloody _forever_ to figure out where he'd gone. Thankfully she was loud enough in her frenzied dashing about that one could deduce her location in the house just from her footfalls, so Sherlock felt relatively safe letting her wander about where she would. Not like it was his problem if she destroyed any breakable objects, anyway. Idly he picked at a bit of peeling wallpaper next to his hand and wondered how long he'd have to remain cramped up in this stupid closet before Hayley either found him or admitted defeat.

The piece of plaster he'd been picking at shifted, pulled free from the wall with a soft _shuff_ noise and he startled, thinking he'd actually torn the entire section off. _(Bloody hell he hadn't been pulling _that_ hard!) _But when he looked down it was to find instead that a square section of the wall _itself _had actually come loose in his hand - some sort of jerry-rigged trap door? The plaster was cut in straight corners all the way through, as if by a knife or box cutter, and behind it...

Intrigued, Sherlock crouched down to peer into the little alcove he'd inadvertently uncovered. Pitch-dark inside, but with the scant bit of sunlight filtering through the cracks in the closet door he could almost make out a bundle of objects. A hidden stash? This had been their nephew's room, hadn't it? Contraband, then? Interesting. Fascinating, even. He grabbed the bundle and squinted at it in the half-light. Couldn't see a thing. Too dark...

_Get out of the closet, then, you idiot._ Oh, right.

"Hey! You're supposed to stay hidden!" Hayley exclaimed indignantly as Sherlock re-emerged into the bedroom. She'd been on all fours searching under the bed, apparently not having considered that his height would make it impossible for him to fit under there, and was now glaring up at him like he'd committed some horrid atrocity by breaking cover.

"You've lost anyway, it's been longer than two minutes." As he spoke he moved over to the bed and dropped the little bundle onto it. The string holding the makeshift pouch together came loose and a small assortment of items along with a rolled up sheaf of papers tumbled over the quilt.

"Where'd you get that?" Hayley asked curiously.

Sherlock picked up a small photograph of a dog. "It was hidden in the wall."

"Neat!"

He let her fiddle with the odd little handful of plastic cars and dinosaurs from the collection while he unfurled the stack of papers. Rolled fairly tightly, some yellowing at the edges - clearly they'd been behind the plaster for quite some time.

The topmost item was a note:

_Aunty H - if you've found this I'm sorry. I know you said I should stop prying into this stuff, but I can't just ignore it. Someone's gotta do something. He needs to be stopped. Even if it means I- _(the next few words had been hastily scribbled through in black ink by a shaking hand) -..._ I know he'll try to convince you I'm crazy again. And maybe I am a little. But please, aunty, I know it's hard but you have to believe me this time. I've got proof now. If he finds out I got this stuff I'm dead but I'll make as many copies as I can before he notices. The police won't listen, but someone needs to know. Someone has to..._

The rest of the missive had been torn off, the paper crumpled and worn. Sherlock flipped wide-eyed to the next page and found a thick stack of what looked like official medical documents - purchase orders, dosages, nurse logs... and buried at the very bottom a summary of Harold Hudson's malpractice insurance pricing. He scanned that page in particular, noting the number of patient fatalities. Was that high, for an oncologist? How was one to know what constituted a normal death rate? The insurance premiums, maybe... abnormally raised? Damn, couldn't tell without a baseline to draw from...

"Did Josh leave this stuff here?" Hayley piped up, cutting into his thoughts. Sherlock glanced down to find her pretending to ramp a toy car off the rear end of a dinosaur.

"Apparently." Besides the troubling sheaf of papers there didn't seem to be much else of interest in the stash. Half a dozen small toys, a short glass pipe _(still smelt of marijuana - he grabbed that and tucked it back out of sight before Hayley could do something stupid like lick it)_, a few photographs of school friends and a newspaper clipping of a smiling couple with a dog. Presumably all normal hidden treasures of a teenage boy.

Hayley's expression had fallen as she continued to push the toy car around. "I miss Josh... he was really nice. He used to read books with me and do all the monster voices."

"How long ago did he leave?" Sherlock asked as he flipped back to the nurse logs, trying to decipher the hasty notes scrawled into the margins. Mrs. Hudson had already mentioned something about the boy disappearing last August, he recalled vaguely - it would be interesting to see if their stories matched, though.

Hayley shrugged. "I dunno. A long time ago... like a year I guess? He said he'd call me when he got to Michigan but he never did."

This fact seemed to dampen her spirits considerably. Without warning she dropped the car she'd been holding onto the quilt and looked up to Sherlock with a slight quiver to her lip. "Do... do you think he doesn't like me anymore?"

She sniffed forcefully, eyes welling up - oh christ _she was going to cry. _Sherlock baulked and cast about frantically for something to say that might mollify her. Think, think... she wanted to know Joshua hadn't forgotten her, right? Why hadn't the man called, then? Had to be some explanation, something that would...

"He didn't mean to abandon you," Sherlock realised in a flash of insight as he shifted the papers in his hands, caught sight of the note on top. "He's probably been killed."

Hayley fixed him with a horrified expression, choked on a strangled little gasp, and Sherlock's eyes widened in response his own words. _Shit_, wait, that... hadn't come out right. Why had he-? Argh, no, try again you daft idiot!

"That is, er..." He brandished the papers in his hand, trying to force back the wince for his own utter lack of tact. "These documents indicate he was collecting sensitive information, so it would make the most sense to assume he's been... erm. Well either that or I suppose he may have gone into hiding? But that's generally quite tricky to pull off without significant resources to fabricate a new identity, so..."

"J-Josh isn't _dead_!" Hayley screeched, her expression gone furious. "Why would you-!? H-he went to Michigan like he said he was gonna!"

"Do you have any proof of that?" Sherlock asked before he could think not to. Would be quite enlightening to find out the answer, actually... perhaps Mrs. Hudson had a phone number on hand? Could it be cross-referenced? How had they been informed of his whereabouts, anyway, before losing contact? Or _had_ they lost touch, even? Perhaps Mrs. Hudson had spoken to him recently? And what about Harold? If this was all in relation to some malfeasance perpetrated by the doctor, then he could be...

"You're one of Satan's _liars_!" Out of nowhere Hayley hurled a toy car at his head, sobbing, then bolted out of the room in tears. Sherlock was taken off-guard enough to forget to dodge - he yelped in surprise as a plastic wheel hit him square in the face, clapped a hand over his nose with a pained grimace. Oh fucking _fuck, _why had she-!? Right on the sodding _bone_, christ, if it was bleeding he'd-... Oh no, hell, where'd she gone!?

"Hayley, hang on... wait!" Sherlock dropped the sheaf of papers onto the bed and turned to chase after her. A coughing fit stopped him mid-step, however, forcing an arm round his spasming abdomen as he doubled over in pain. Argh, _fuck_, just ignore it, ignore it... find the girl. Injuries weren't important.

Down the end of the hall he finally stumbled into was the front entryway of the house - a screen mesh with a heavier wooden panel for security, veranda and garden beyond. Mrs. Hudson hadn't bothered to lock either of them when she left.

Both doors had been flung open, now, swinging on their hinges.

_Shit._

_**««**_


End file.
